The present invention relates to a cigarette filter-rod manufacturing device.
Up to the present, a conventional cigarette filter-rod manufacturing device is composed as shown in FIG. 7, in which a tow (namely, acetate fibre flux) 101 is drawn out from a tow bale 102, and taken in a tow processing device 105 from a pair of pretension rollers 104 through a guide arm 103 located above the tow bale 102. In the tow processing device 105, the first processing step stretches the tow 101 towards a specified direction between a pair of pretension rollers 104 and a pair of feed rollers 106, and the second processing step relaxes the tow 101 within a specified ratio between the pair of feed rollers 106 and a pair of delivery rollers 107. The tow 101 treated to the above processes is fed into a rod-making device 108 after adding plasticizer. In this rod-making device, the tow 101 is wrapped with a wrapping paper 110 while being shaped like a rod, and results in a long continuous rod body 109. Then, the rod body 109 is cut to the specified length, then fed into the (not shown) filter packing device, and at last a packing case filled with the cut filters is continuously produced.
At a manufacturing site or an inspection room, it is confirmed whether the filter-rod produced in accordance with the above-mentioned process is within the specified standard values for characteristic properties such as weight, pressure drop and circumference for a fixed interval.
If the checked values of the tow are in the upper or lower standard range, the manufacturing conditions are finely regulated and conditions are reset so that the produced filter-rod may come in the middle value of the specified standard.
In the above quality control process, an operator generally samples the filter-rods at fixed intervals, measures the weight of the filter-rods and finely regulates the manufacturing conditions by hand in respect to the measured results so that the quantity of the tow 101 taken in the manufacturing device is kept at a specified constant value.
However, as the above-mentioned quality control process is a comparatively simple operation, and it is preferable to automize said process to stabilize the quality of filter produced, and another quality control process adopting some automatized control has been practiced.
In such an automatized process, generally B rays are penetrated in the running rod body 109 in the rod-making device 108, and the penetrated does are continuously measured, then the speed at which the tow 101 is taken in is automatically regulated so as to keep the amount of penetrated B rays at a specified constant value.
However, the quality control process using manual operation requires some degree of operator experience and is apt to result in a drop in operating efficiency and stable quality filter-rods.
In employing the above automatized quality control process, it is also necessary to prepare an effective radioactive ray-processing facility and provide operators qualified to handle radioactive rays. Such a facility cannot be easily installed into existing facilities, which increases costs substantially and necessitates the employment of experienced and qualified additional personnel.
The present invention was developed in consideration of the above noted drawbacks, and its object is to provide a cigarette filter-rod manufacturing device having an automatized control device for regulating filter-rod weight, able to reduce installation and running costs and to be easily installed in already existing manufacturing facilities without requiring any special facilities or additional qualified personnel for operating the control device.